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Hello and welcome to this Friday's extract from How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter.

CLICK HERE to read How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter from the beginning.This link takes you to the first post, so you can read the extracts in sequence. I'll post up one extract each Friday. At the end of each Friday post you'll see a link to take you on to the next extract.

Attention skills: help your infant concentrateYour newborn baby never plans. He reacts. He responds to loud noises with a startle reflex but relaxes when he hears your voice. By 3 months, he turns his head to the direction of the sounds he hears.

Soon, he watches your face closely as you talk. Make the most of this contact. Speak quietly to him and make happy faces. Watch him concentrate hard and copy your facial movements. When you poke out your tongue, he follows suit a few moments later.

His concentration is intense. This is natural. Everything is still new and he needs to understand it.

Sometimes you speak to him and he won’t look at you. He’s too busy watching a mobile, or the patterns of leaves against the sky, or he’s wiggling his toes. He may be aware of his own internal feelings. Maybe he’s getting hungry. He can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

Attention skills: baby’s short attention spanHe can’t choose the subject of his concentration. It happens by chance. If a new toy catches his eye, he loses interest in what he is doing and puts all his attention on the new toy. If he bangs his hand, he forgets what he was looking at and cries, but you can distract him by giving him something new to see, hear, feel, smell or taste.

During his first year, his concentration span remains short and single-channel. He plays with one toy for a few moments, then moves on to something else. It helps him to have just one or two toys available at a time. Let him play with these until he loses interest, then put them away and give him something else. Avoid surrounding him with dozens of toys all at once. He finds it difficult to settle down with one toy if there are too many other things nearby.

Attention skills: baby activities: peep-boTo play peer-bo, you hide your face from your baby, then pop your head out and say “peep-bo”. It’s a great attention builder. At the start of the game you make and hold eye contact with him. This captures his awareness and he watches you closely.

Then hide your face. This surprises him. It takes him aback. He sits for a second, puzzled. Maybe he feels a touch of anxiety. Then, you pop your head out again and give him a start. You smile; he laughs and has his reward for waiting.

He learns several lessons.

First, he learns that making eye contact with you is fun. Second, he finds that his bonus for waiting a moment is that you appear again. Third, he works out that your face might disappear but come back again: it hasn’t gone away forever.

That helps his intellectual development, as he learns that objects still exist, even when he can’t see them. As a bonus, he finds that you like laughing with him. This helps him feel secure and happy, providing the perfect environment for relaxed development.

Come back next week for the next extract to find out more about your child's attention skills and discover more activities you can carry out yourself. CLICK HERE for the next extract.Can't wait? BUY NOW Download How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter in seconds for just £3.53.

Twenty-five people sat around a table. There was tension in the air: they had a problem to solve.. After years of fund-raising, their organisations had enough money to build a grand new building, for the benefit of the children in the area. Their expectations were high, because the architects were coming and each participant was determined to have her say.

They set the room out with tables making a square shape, so everyone could see everyone else; it was all very fair and equal. The chairperson, Jane, sat in the middle of one of the sides.

‘At our last meeting,’ she said, ‘we agreed on the aims and objectives for the centre. Now we need to look at the practicalities. What will the building look like?’

The nursery manager was the first to speak.

‘My nursery needs to have 12 children in each of two shifts,’ she said. The architect did the sums; there are rules about the space every child must have. He drew the room on a large piece of paper pinned to a board.

‘We need rooms where we can have private conversations with Mums and Dads,’ said the counsellors. The architect drew two rooms.

‘We need just as many,’ said the health visitor, her voice rising slightly. ‘We need them every day, because we will have contact with every single family.’ The architect drew two more rooms.

‘We need a space for our dental surgery,’ said the dentist. ‘Here’s my sketch of what we need.’ The architect added some more rooms.

The sketch grew and grew until it covered all the white paper. Everyone knew what she wanted. Everyone had a valid argument for her service and the space it needed. The architect added rooms here; toilets there; a kitchen at the back and storage areas everywhere.

Finally, the architect did some quick calculations. The building would need at least three times the funds that were available.

That was where the fun really started.

The midwife glared at the counsellor while the play workers got angrier and angrier as the dentist reiterated how important his service was to the public, and how he had the backing of the big guns in the NHS. The nursery manager looked as though she was about to burst into tears and the health visitor’s voice grew louder and shriller with every moment.

‘OK,’ said Jane. ‘Let’s break for coffee.’ Everyone got up, tight lipped. While they collected tea, coffee and biscuits, Jane and a couple of helpers moved all the chairs away from the table into a semicircle around the architect’s board. When people came back, cup in hand, it took them a few minutes to find a new place to sit.

Jane took up her chair in front of the board and said,

‘This is tricky stuff. Let’s look at it together. We know what each of us wants, but it’s clear that we can’t have it all. How can we sort it out? What are we going to do?’

There was a silence. She let it carry on.

‘Well,’ said one of the counsellors, Kathy, eventually. ‘I wonder if Susan (the health visitor) and I could share a room sometimes.’ She turned slightly to Susan who was sitting next to her. ‘Sometimes I go out on home visits, and I know you do too. What do you think? Perhaps we could have a rota?’

‘I suppose I don’t need the room everyday,’ said Susan, in a less shrill voice.

‘Could we use it sometimes to talk to our parents?’ asked the play worker, nervously.

Slowly, amazingly, the battleground, where everyone fought his corner, became a market place, full of haggling and bargaining. At last, the architect drew a smaller building, one where spaces were flexible and shared. He clicked away at his laptop for a few minutes, then looked up and grinned. They could afford it.

Susan and Kathy left the room together, bubbling over with a new idea they had, to hold a joint clinic where people could see them both in one visit.

What happened?Jane made a few changes to take the heat out of the situation. She let everyone have her say first, so they all recognised the problem. When she saw that it was hard for them to resolve their differences straight away, she called a halt. She stopped the meeting and made everyone stand up and walk about. They had a chance to ‘shake off’ some negative emotions.

Getting coffee together evokes feelings of cooperation and bonding. Most cultures in the world will prefer not to eat or drink with their enemies. By simply agreeing to eat and drink together, some of the tension between the people in the room disappeared.

Jane then changed the layout of the room. Instead of sitting round a table, glaring at each other, the participants found themselves sitting side by side, facing the same way.

Sitting face to face can be confrontational. In Jane’s new setting, people literally looked at the problem together. They began to take on some of the attributes of a team.

They felt they were engaged in a joint enterprise. They were a bright bunch. Jane had confidence that they would be able to solve their problems.

Hello and welcome to this Friday's extract from How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter. CLICK HERE to read How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter from the beginning.This link takes you to the first post, so you can read the extracts in sequence. I'll post up one extract each Friday. At the end of each Friday post you'll see a link to take you on to the next extract.The Five KeysIn last week's extract, I revealed the Five Keys to Language Learning:

attention skills;

listening;

understanding;

play;

speech.

This extract introduces the First Key: Attention Skills.The more help your child gets from you, the better his language skills will be. You’ll have a real treat, seeing how well he progresses, and knowing you’re giving him the best start possible. Nevertheless, some children have problems learning language. Sometimes a child takes longer to reach language goals, or he becomes stuck at one stage and can’t seem to move on. Read the Monitoring section towards the end of the book, to check on the language goals you can expect your child to reach at different times during his early life. If you think his progress in reaching these stages is slow, then get help straight away from your healthcare provider. Don’t delay. Don’t “wait and see.” Early intervention is incredibly important, as it lets you, and the right professionals, help your child while his brain is at its most receptive. The first 3 years of your child’s life are precious.If you have to wait for an appointment to assess your child, make sure you use the time to keep working on the five keys to your child’s success, by playing language games. Just be sure that you carry out activities that he can manage and enjoy. Don’t rush, or try to push him on faster than he can go. Let him progress at a pace that feels comfortable for him. That way, you’ll go on giving him the best opportunities you can, even before professional help kicks in. First Key: Attention SkillsAttention skills: infantsYour baby has all his five senses in place at birth. He can already see, hear, touch, smell and taste. He spends three busy years, growing and developing at an amazing rate. He uses his senses to take in the world around him, becoming familiar with this new place. From the moment he enters the world, he has access to vast amounts of information. He can easily be overwhelmed. He needs to sort out all the new stimulation around him, and learn to attend to one thing at a time. Later on, he learns how to shift his attention deliberately from one single thing that captured his interest, to something else, so he can listen and learn. Children who fail to control their own attention find it difficult to learn when they arrive in school. Nursery, preschool, kindergarten and infant schools surround a child with a busier, noisier environment. Help your child learn to attend to one task at a time to make it easier for him to cope at school.Attention skills: the infant brainYour baby has a billion brain cells at birth. These are just about all he needs for the rest of his life. However, he needs to connect the cells to each other, linking each neuron to a number of others. Links establish themselves as he finds out about new things and develops new skills, and myelin sheaths grow over the connections, stabilising and protecting them permanently.Once the sheaths are in place, the rate of growth slows. As a result, your child has “critical periods” of development, when different aspects of his growth and learning increase most rapidly. Scientists agree that your child’s first three years are the most critical for language learning, although he continues to develop his language skills rapidly until he reaches 10 years of age. Make the most of the vital first three years by understanding how best to help him make the brain connections that lead to the best possible language abilities.Start as soon as he’s born. Use his five senses to build his language, beginning with the simple task of looking at your face. Attention skills: baby activities: singingYour newborn baby hears and enjoys music. He turns to gentle sounds, and moves his body. Use this sense of hearing and his natural instinct for rhythm and tune to help him develop his ability to concentrate. Rock him or bounce him gently on your knee as you sing to him. No matter how croaky your voice may be, sing nursery rhymes or pop songs; whatever you enjoy most. Your baby doesn’t mind what you sing, but he loves to hear your voice and listening to you will help him focus his attention on sound. Much of his experience in the early months is visual or through his senses of touch, taste and smell. Singing helps him concentrate on his hearing.Come back next week for the next extract To find out more about your child's attention skills and discover more activities you can carry out yourself. Read the 3rd extract HERE.

Hello and welcome to this first Friday extract from How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter.

You can read the extracts in sequence. I'll post up one extract each Friday.

At the end of each Friday post you'll see a link to take you on to the next extract.

About Language Hold your newborn baby close and dream of the happy, fulfilled life you want for him. Maybe you feel determined he’ll grow up smart, happy and resilient, close to family and surrounded by a circle of friends.

It’s amazing to think of this tiny scrap as a real grown up person, with his own personality, living out there in the real world with all its stresses and strains.

Maybe you pause and wonder how to make sure he’ll be smart and successful. The world can be a difficult place. He’ll have your love and support as he grows, you’ll look after his hunger and thirst, keep him warm, pick him up when he falls down, hug him and cuddle him.

However, you long to know what else you can do to help.

Imagine a beautiful golden chest with your child’s name on it. Inside that closed, locked chest nestles a hoard of wonderful language treasure. That hoard is just about the greatest gift you can give your child and he needs your help to unlock the chest so he can use the treasures of language he’ll find inside.

You can help him find the keys to his own golden treasure chest so he can use the skills inside to become the best, smartest, most accomplished person he can be.

This book tells you how your child develops language and exactly what you need to do to help. Start now to give your child the keys to his own treasure chest, and a head start on life.

Language: a hidden treasureSmart people have something in common. They may be different from each other in many ways. Some are engineers or writers. Some win prizes for science or make millions by selling products the world wants. Some broker deals that end wars and bring peace to warring parts of the world while others paint, sculpt or make music.

Some come from wealthy families, others from poverty, and they all have effective language skills.

Language is more than speech, reading and writing. Language is the foundation that underpins all of those skills. It allows people to talk, to plan, to share ideas and to communicate their thoughts to the rest of the world.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Sculptors and engineers? Do engineers have strong language skills? Surely, some of these groups of people are famous for their lack of verbal ability. Don’t sculptors sculpt instead of talking?”

Maths languageThink of the archetypal mathematician from books or the movies. You may know someone like him. Let’s call him John. John is difficult to get on with. He’s taciturn and unable to make relationships. People say he has poor language skills.

What they really mean is that he has poor communication skills. His language is actually highly sophisticated. He understands the language of number: a complex, abstract tool that lets him think conceptually and express the most complicated and subtle of thoughts, and he writes them down in a set of detailed equations that mean nothing to those of us without his language skill.

Yes, John’s communication skills could use some work. If he understood non-verbal cues better, he might not stand so close when he’s talking and he might learn not to spoil your best story by walking away, just because he’s had a sudden idea. He’s bad at non-verbal communication and social skills.

Nevertheless, his language skills function at the highest level. Without the language of maths, he would still be piling up building blocks and watching them fall down.

Your child learns fast before he even begins to talk. Billions of brain cells already exist, and during his early months, he starts building pathways between them. That’s how he learns. Follow three rules to encourage his brain to develop during his early months and give him a head start in language skills by offering him:

• a safe environment;

• opportunities for enriching experiences;

• close attachment to you.

Safety Reduce your baby’s stress by helping him feel secure. Respond when he cries, make sure he feels safe and introduce a routine, so he knows what is going to happen. If he feels stressed and anxious for a long time, his brain produces high levels of cortisol. This chemical is fine in small doses, but too much of it for too long appears to slow brain development. A calm baby can learn more easily.

Keep sound levels low and avoid sudden bursts of noise, movement and action. Use quiet, soothing music and gentle voices to relax him and help him sleep, building a secure routine that makes him feel safe. Let him sleep when he needs to.

OpportunityOffer him new experiences, one at a time. Take him with you on trips to buy groceries, talk to him as you change him, dress him and play with him. Use the times when he’s awake and alert to introduce him to new experiences, so he can build on his knowledge over time.

Repetition matters to your baby, as his brain establishes new pathways, so include familiar things in his day as well as new ones. Try a daily walk in the park, or round the corner, so he can experience a mix of regular and new events. Talk about the things you see and hear together. Name his clothes, his food, parts of his body, animals and cars in the street.

Play with him, kneeling down and getting close to him, playing baby games and singing together. Every experience is new and interesting, and time spent with you is the best of all.

AttachmentEnjoy the unique relationship you have with your baby. Learn to recognise his needs: see if you can recognise how his hungry cry differs from his tired cry, for example. You won’t get it right all the time, but fulfilling his needs just one third of the time is enough to build a bond. A baby learns most in his first year from one adult, who he spends time with and grows attached to.

Make sure your baby learns to trust you, by being reliable. You may not be with him all the time, the when you are, give him your full attention. Ensure that anyone who cares for him when you are elsewhere understands the importance of responding to his needs.

Find out more about helping your child talk and learn from my eBook, How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter, available for Kindle, iPad, iPhone and PC.

Here are a few must-read posts, written by communication specialists, speech and language therapists and speech language pathologists, for parents or teachers. The blogs have plenty of other posts, so why not visit and find out more.

Why not leave a comment on the SpeechContacts Human Communication Blog to let people know about other great posts you've found.

Smart Talkers guest post by the Talking Matters team www.talkingmatters.com.au gives 10 ways to develop your child’s language. The short, snappy post is crammed with sound advice. Print it out and stick it on the wall.

This post is stuffed full of tips on using your daily routine to grow your child’s language skills. Busy parents, you don’t need to devote hours to your child’s language development: just ollow these tips throughout the day.

This post aims at teachers rather than parents, with ideas for circle time, focusing on keeping activities for 2-year olds short and interesting. It offers thought-provoking insights for parents as well as teachers.

This post reprints an email from a parent who has been working on her own with her son, following the advice on this blog. It’s about the sounds of speech rather than a difficulty in developing language. This mother worked hard!

This is my own blog and I post here regularly. This post suggests some mostly inexpensive but great toys for baby language learning. Ask your baby’s friends and family to avoid loud plastic toys and give your child something he’ll learn from for months and years.

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Want more tips and real information on how your baby learns to talk?Check out How to Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter.

Your newborn baby already uses his voice to tell you things, long before he says his first word. In his early days and weeks, you might notice he uses slightly different cries for a variety of purposes. He may have a hungry cry, for example, that you notice is different from the cry he uses when he's uncomfortable. By 3 months, he'll know he can use his voice to tell you when he's pleased or unhappy; excited or tired. From now on, you'll hear plenty of coos, gurgles and shouts.

Listening skillsBefore your child talks, he listens: to noises around; to human voices and, most importantly, to your voice. He hears your intonation patterns: the tune of your speech as your voice rises and falls. He hears your voice rise in a question, get louder when you're annoyed, become low and soft when you play baby games with him.

He hears certain sounds repeated again and again. "Teddy",you say when you give him his toy. "Here's Teddy." Or maybe, "Poor Teddy's on the floor." Gradually, that combination of four sounds, t-e-dd-y, so strange to him at first, comes to mean the cuddly thing he sucks and hugs.

Now Teddy has a name. At first, though, your baby can't say Teddy's name. That's because the sounds are hard for him to make in the right order, at the right time.

PracticeMeanwhile, he enjoys his own noises. "Ga ga" he says, his tongue falling naturally into that position. He likes it, repeats it and finds other sounds that are fun. Soon he starts babbling and finds that you join in, encouraging all the noises, repeating strings of nonsense back to him.

Between 6 months and 1 year, he plays often with babbling noises, trying out all the sounds of speech. He doesn't stick to his native language, but includes sounds he'll never need to use. Over time, his babbling begins to sound more and more like your speech, even though there are no real words there yet.

His strings of sounds get longer and he joins them together until he produces something that sounds like the intonation patterns of speech. At this point, parents sometimes feel their baby is trying to talk. He hasn't got there yet, but as he plays with sounds he prepares himself for his launch into speech.

Real speech begins when sequences his sounds into a meaningful word that real speech begins.

FeedbackAt some point during his sound play, he hits on a combination of sounds that resemble a word.

"Da," he says as his father picks him up, "Da-da-da."

Delighted, his father smiles, cuddles him and repeats the word. What a reward. He tries that again. Every time he makes that combination of sounds, at the right time, you celebrate, repeat it and reinforce it. As his accuracy improves, he gets it right every time, encouraged by your excited feedback. There it is: "daddy": his first word.

Your child's first word may be something different. Maybe he says "Mama" first.

MeaningSo when did he say his first real word? Was it when he hit upon the sounds by accident? Perhaps when he looked at Daddy (or Mummy) and said the same sounds again, by accident, or maybe later, when he looked at Daddy and said with intent "Dada?"

A real word is one where the group of sounds fit together to label something. Language is so much more than a string of sounds, grouped together in random patterns. Without meaning, speech is a useless jumble.

In order to use his speech meaningfully, your child learns to understand the purpose of words, phrases and sentences. Then he's ready to use a collection of words, in different orders with different purposes.

For the moment, be delighted that your child, at around a year to 15 months old, has produced his first meaningful word. He's made a giant leap in the right direction.

Babies enjoy their interaction with you far more than the most expensive toys. Your face, voice, security and care matter to your child. As she grows, select the right toys to save money while you help her develop language skills.

Soft rattles: in her first year, she loves toys that encourage her to notice sights and sounds, smells and tastes and the way things feel. She learns to spend a few seconds following a moving toy, or turning to the sound of a rattle or a soft, squeaky toy. She builds brain pathways, learning rapidly about her new world as she repeats the same actions often.

Rolling balls: as she starts to move, crawling or shuffling across the floor, her universe opens up. A soft ball with a bell inside encourages her to follow as it rolls away, and she keeps listening as she searches, using her ears to find where it went. Good listening skills lead to easier language development.

Plastic cutlery: safe spoons, plates and cups make good plaything as she starts to eat solid food, sitting in her high chair, dropping them on the floor and looking around to find them. She learns that objects still exist, even when they drop out of sight. This lays foundations for understanding symbols, and helps her prepare to recognise pictures and words.

Teddy: dolls, teddies and soft toys with faces and bodies help her play out pretend sequences. Beginning by carrying teddy around with her, she learns to pretend clean his teeth or wash his feet. She builds up whole scenes, treating teddy as a real person and hearing you say the words for his body parts.

Dolls house: a robust dolls house is a wonderful investment that will last your child for years. If funds won’t allow a commercial house, why not get creative with a cardboard box? Playing with miniature toys takes her symbolic understanding further. She’s a long way from reading, but these games are the early steps in learning.

Musical instruments: rhythm, listening to different sounds and making music herself introduce her to the rhythms of speech and sharpen those listening skills. She needs to hear the difference between a range of speech sounds as she begins to recognise words, and tuning her ears with music helps. She doesn’t need a violin: a saucepan and wooden spoon will do.

Books: tiny babies love books with faces and mirrors. As she grows, she loves books with flaps she can pull up. She likes the repetition of a bedtime story or nursery rhymes, familiarising herself with the words and speech rhythms as you repeat them a hundred times.

Avoid: too many noisy toys that ‘talk’ or ‘sing’. Your child has her own imagination. Let her use it. Sing and talk with her yourself. She likes you better than any plastic toy. Click here to find 50 different, inexpensive activities for your child.

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I write this Communication Blog

Frances Evesham: on the run around Europe for years, with only a husband, three children and a succession of opinionated cats to keep me out of trouble. Somerset stopped me in my tracks. Now I walk in the country and breathe sea air. I will get around to cleaning the house soon.

I've been a speech therapist, a professional communication
fiend and a road sweeper. I sometimes work in the criminal courts to uphold fair
questioning of people with special needs.

I smell the roses, lavender and rosemary as I cook with a glass of wine in one hand and a bunch of chillies in the other. Writing historical romances and books on communication
leaves enough time to enjoy bad jokes and puns and wish I’d kept on with the
piano lessons.

Frances Evesham is a participant in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.